We’re now only 38 days before the wedding, and while we’re doing pretty well on most fronts (I just settled the last of the vendors today), looming before us is now….The Ceremony.  We roughed out the major parts with our officiant this weekend, but we still have to choose readings, write something to say to each other before the vows, and write our vows.  No small task, and one that has me pretty nervous.  I’m a decent writer,  but doing justice to the subject in 60 seconds or less is darn near impossible.  How do you give an “elevator pitch” for a nearly  five year relationship?  How do you explain that you love someone more than you ever thought possible, without having it sound like saccharine?  I’m really struggling with this.  I take some solace in the idea that many other couples struggle with the same thing, and they eventually write their vows, so I imagine that we will eventually succeed as well.

Nothing much happening on the creative front – I’ve decided that I really need lessons to learn the fine details of making good tapestry, and a table loom really isn’t great for weaving tapestry.  So I’ve set the loom and tapestry yarns aside until after the wedding, when I’ll be able to take classes, etc.  The dyeing has been on hold because my trusty digital scale, which has served me well for 20+ years, died over the weekend.  (Replacement ordered, but not here yet.)  And, to be honest, I haven’t really had the mental energy to do anything else.  I originally thought it was a passing thing, but now I think it’s pre-wedding jitters.

Which is fine, but if I don’t have SOMETHING creative to do, I’ll lose my mind entirely.  So I am casting about, thinking of craft projects to do – either something simple that I can do with very little mental energy, or something so interesting that it will engage my mental energies.  I must admit I’m drawing a blank right now (see previous notes on inability to focus), but I’m sure something will come in time.  I’m kind of interested in bookbinding, as I want to bind my collection of Weaver’s magazines into a set of books (so they don’t get damaged sitting around loose), and recently bought two books on the subject, but not sure I have the energy for that.  I’ll have to think about it.

T minus 38 days.  Wow, that’s close.  I’m starting to get nervous.

We got our rings!!  And they are EXQUISITE.  We hired a wondrously gifted jeweler, Carol Mortensen, to create them for us by delicately carving a wax model, then casting the rings using the lost-wax method.  This assures an exact duplicate of the wax model, and a one-of-a-kind ring.

At the Contemporary Craft Show at Fort Mason, Carol had shown us a beautiful ring she had created for another client, with three Chinese dragons chasing each other around the ring.  This was beautiful, but we really wanted a more “wedding-oriented” design.  We also wanted something that would be unique to us…so I delved into Chinese symbolism and discovered that the dragon-phoenix was a common motif in Chinese weddings.  The dragon represents the male principle, the phoenix the female.  (In the Imperial Court, the Emperor’s sigil was the dragon, and the Empress’s sigil was the phoenix, so these are powerful symbols!)

So, we asked her to carve a dragon and a phoenix, along with a flaming pearl, into our rings.

Carol did an impressive amount of research to get the carvings right: first she researched the legend of the phoenix (the dragon she had researched for her previous client), to understand what it would look like and what each part symbolized.  Then she looked for other phoenix art, searching not only through the Internet but also through books on Chinese culture.  Finally, she settled on one photo I had given her, which (by a curious coincidence) was a photo I had taken of a phoenix woodcarving in China.

Now she set to work.  First she carved several “test” phoenixes on a flat piece of wax.  She took some components of my photo, mixing and matching with pieces of other images until she was happy with the composition.  Then she carved out a rough model on a round ring, since that would alter the proportions.

And then it was time to carve the real thing!  This time Carol went to work with her finest tools, creating intricate detail.  She works under a low-power microscope, with exquisitely delicate tools – her carving tool is only .17 mm (6/1000 inch) wide!  That’s about double the width of a human hair.  It took her one entire month, working every day, to research, carve, cast, and finish our rings.

But it was totally worth it.  Every millimeter of each ring is covered in delicate carvings – the scales of the dragon, the feathers of the phoenix, and the gentle waves of the background.  It is exquisite – museum quality work.

And…the moment you’ve been waiting for….the photos!!

(I took the photos of B.’s ring – it’s slightly bigger than mine, which made photography easier.  Please do click on the photos to view the larger versions – it’s well worth seeing the details up close.)